THE MAN WITH THE NOSE.
THE MAN WITH THE NOSE.
[The details of this little story are of course imaginary, but the main incidents are, to the best of my belief, facts. They happened twenty, or more than twenty years ago.]CHAPTER I.
[The details of this little story are of course imaginary, but the main incidents are, to the best of my belief, facts. They happened twenty, or more than twenty years ago.]
“Letus get a map and see what places look pleasantest?” says she.
“As for that,” reply I, “on a map most places look equally pleasant.”
“Never mind; get one!”
I obey.
“Do you like the seaside?” asks Elizabeth, lifting her little brown head and her small happy white face from the English sea-coastalong which, her forefinger is slowly travelling.
“Since you ask me, distinctlyno,” reply I, for once venturing to have a decided opinion of my own, which during the last few weeks of imbecility I can be hardly said to have had. “I broke my last wooden spade five and twenty years ago. I have but a poor opinion of cockles—sandy red-nosed things, are not they? and the air always makes me bilious.”
“Then we certainly will not go there,” says Elizabeth, laughing. “A bilious bridegroom! alliterative but horrible! None of our friends show the least eagerness to lend us their country house.”
“Oh that God would put it into the hearts of men to take their wives straight home, as their fathers did,” say I, with a cross groan.
“It is evident, therefore, that we must go somewhere,” returns she, not heeding the aspiration contained in my last speech, making herforefinger resume its employment, and reaching Torquay.
“I suppose so,” say I, with a sort of sigh; “for once in our lives we must resign ourselves to having the finger of derision pointed at us by waiters and landlords.”
“You shall leave your new portmanteau at home, and I will leave all my best clothes, and nobody will guess that we are bride and bridegroom; they will think that we have been married—oh, ever since the world began” (opening her eyes very wide).
I shake my head. “With an old portmanteau and in rags we shall still have the mark of the beast upon us.”
“Do you mind much? do you hate being ridiculous?” asks Elizabeth, meekly, rather depressed by my view of the case; “because if so, let us go somewhere out of the way, where there will be very few people to laugh at us.”
“On the contrary,” return I, stoutly, “we will betake ourselves to some spot where such as we do chiefly congregate—where we shall be swallowed up and lost in the multitude of our fellow-sinners.” A pause devoted to reflection. “What do you say to Killarney?” say I, cheerfully.
“There are a great many fleas there, I believe,” replies Elizabeth, slowly; “flea-bites make large lumps on me; you would not like me if I were covered with large lumps.”
At the hideous ideal picture thus presented to me by my little beloved I relapse into inarticulate idiocy; emerging from which by-and-by, I suggest “The Lakes?” My arm is round her, and I feel her supple body shiver though it is mid July, and the bees are booming about in the still and sleepy noon garden outside.
“Oh—no—no—notthere!”
“Why such emphasis?” I ask gaily; “more fleas? At this rate, and with thissine quâ non, our choice will grow limited.”
“Something dreadful happened to me there,” she says, with another shudder. “But indeed I did not think there was any harm in it—I never thought anything would come of it.”
“What the devil was it?” cry I, in a jealous heat and hurry; “what the mischiefdidyou do, and why have not you told me about it before?”
“I did notdomuch,” she answers meekly, seeking for my hand, and when found kissing it in timid deprecation of my wrath; “but I was ill—very ill—there; I had a nervous fever. I was in a bed hung with a chintz with a red and green fern-leaf pattern on it. I have always hated red and green fern-leaf chintzes ever since.”
“It would be possible to avoid the obnoxiousbed, would not it?” say I, laughing a little. “Where does it lie? Windermere? Ulleswater? Wastwater? Where?”
“We were at Ulleswater,” she says, speaking rapidly, while a hot colour grows on her small white cheeks—“Papa, mamma, and I; and there came a mesmeriser to Penrith, and we went to see him—everybody did—and he asked leave to mesmerise me—he said I should be such a good medium—and—and—I did not know what it was like. I thought it would be quite good fun—and—and—I let him.”
She is trembling exceedingly; even the loving pressure of my arms cannot abate her shivering.
“Well?”
“And after that I do not remember anything—I believe I did all sorts of extraordinary things that he told me—sang and danced, and made a fool of myself—but when I camehome I was very ill, very—I lay in bed for five whole weeks, and—and was off my head, and said odd and wicked things that you would not have expected me to say—that dreadful bed! shall I ever forget it?”
“We willnotgo to the Lakes,” I say, decisively, “and we will not talk any more about mesmerism.”
“That is right,” she says, with a sigh of relief, “I try to think about it as little as possible; but sometimes, in the dead black of the night, when God seems a long way off, and the devil near, it comes back to me so strongly—I feel, do not you know, as if he werethere—somewhere in the room, and Imustget up and follow him.”
“Why should not we go abroad?” suggest I, abruptly turning the conversation.
“Why, indeed?” cries Elizabeth, recovering her gaiety, while her pretty blue eyes begin to dance. “How stupid of us not to have thoughtof it before; onlyabroadis a big word.Whatabroad?”
“We must be content with something short of Central Africa,” I say, gravely, “as I think our one hundred and fifty pounds would hardly take us that far.”
“Wherever we go, we must buy a dialogue book,” suggests my little bride elect, “and I will learn some phrases before we start.”
“As for that, the Anglo-Saxon tongue takes one pretty well round the world,” reply I, with a feeling of complacent British swagger, putting my hands in my breeches pockets.
“Do you fancy the Rhine?” says Elizabeth, with a rather timid suggestion; “I know it is the fashion to run it down nowadays, and call it a cocktail river; but—but—after all it cannot be soverycontemptible, or Byron could not have said such noble things about it.”
“The castled crag of DrachenfelsFrowns o’er the wide and winding Rhine,Whose breast of waters broadly swellsBetween the banks which bear the vine,”
“The castled crag of DrachenfelsFrowns o’er the wide and winding Rhine,Whose breast of waters broadly swellsBetween the banks which bear the vine,”
“The castled crag of Drachenfels
Frowns o’er the wide and winding Rhine,
Whose breast of waters broadly swells
Between the banks which bear the vine,”
say I, spouting. “After all, that proves nothing, for Byron could have made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”
“The Rhine will not do then?” says she, resignedly, suppressing a sigh.
“On the contrary, it will do admirably: itisa cocktail river, and I do not care who says it is not,” reply I, with illiberal positiveness; “but everybody should be able to say so from their own experience, and not from hearsay: the Rhine let it be, by all means.”
So the Rhine it is.